Bybit vs. Kraken

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Quick Comparison Verdict

Bybit and Kraken are popular crypto platforms with tens of millions of users between them, offering feature-rich crypto trading platforms and a wide selection of cryptocurrencies. Both carry hundreds of crypto trading pairs to choose from, and both offer deep liquidity for both spot and leveraged trading.

Bybit is designed for advanced traders with detailed charting and trading tools, as well as a comprehensive derivatives platform that offers trading with up to 100x leverage. Fees are very low compared to other exchanges, ranging from 0.01% to 0.1% per trade, depending on a user’s trading volume. Bybit boasts a ton of other features as well, including an NFT marketplace, interest-bearing accounts, and a ByBit referral bonus for new traders.

Alternatively, Kraken focuses on beginners and intermediate traders by offering a simple “Buy Now” feature, as well as an advanced trading platform. Kraken has a heavy focus on security, with multiple ways to protect user accounts, as well as user funds. Kraken charges higher fees than Bybit but is also available to U.S. users, whilst Bybit is not.

	ByBit	Kraken
Website	https://www.hedgewithcrypto.com/go/bybit	https://www.hedgewithcrypto.com/go/kraken
Promotion	0% trading fees for 30 days (spot only)	None available at this time
Fiat Currency	USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, +125 Others	USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, CHF, JPY & AUD
Supported Cryptocurrency	331 (608 trading pairs)	222
Max. Trading Fee	0% (spot), 0.06% / 0.01% (futures)	0.16% (maker) and 0.26% (taker)
Overall Rating	HedgewithCrypto Score 4.8 / 5 We provide an overall weighted average rating out of 5 stars. Our ratings are based on objective criteria like the ease of use, fees, deposit methods, customer support and availability. Our reviews are not influenced by 3rd parties. Click here for further information about our rating methodology and a full list of categories we review against. Visit ByBit	HedgewithCrypto Score 4.8 / 5 We provide an overall weighted average rating out of 5 stars. Our ratings are based on objective criteria like the ease of use, fees, deposit methods, customer support and availability. Our reviews are not influenced by 3rd parties. Click here for further information about our rating methodology and a full list of categories we review against. Visit Kraken
Review	Read our full ByBit Review	Read our full Kraken Review

In-Depth Comparison: Bybit vs Kraken

Bybit Overview

Bybit is a top-notch cryptocurrency exchange aimed at margin and derivatives traders. With up to 125x leverage on spot and derivatives trading, as well as access to leveraged tokens, Bybit is one of the top leveraged trading platforms available today. Bybit focuses heavily on providing a comprehensive trading experience, with built-in TradingView charts, multiple order types, and even programmable trading bots.

Bybit serves over 10 million users around the globe and boasts one of the highest daily trading volumes on its derivatives platform alone. Users can also access various other crypto features, such as interest accounts, NFT marketplace, P2P crypto exchange, and have recently launched a crypto debit card to spend funds within the Bybit wallet.

Kraken Overview

Kraken is a cryptocurrency exchange that offers an intuitive trading platform and a simple-to-use mobile app. As one of the oldest crypto exchanges still around, Kraken is a reputable and reliable exchange that offers a secure way to buy and trade crypto. Kraken is known as one of the few crypto exchanges that offer spot margin trading for U.S. customers, but it also has an intuitive Futures trading platform with up to 50x leverage available (non-U.S. users only).

Kraken has over 9 million customers in over 190 countries around the globe and processes over $1 billion in spot trading volume daily. It also offers crypto staking to earn rewards (except for USA residents) on deposited crypto and is launching an NFT marketplace very soon.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Supported Countries

Bybit and Kraken are available worldwide, supporting customers in over 150 countries around the globe. Bybit offers derivatives markets, and due to global regulations, it is not supported in certain countries, such as the United States, Singapore, and Canada. It still supports most countries and hosts over 5 million customers globally. Kraken is one of the most widely supported digital asset exchanges in the world, serving over 9 million customers across 190 countries around the globe.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Trading Volume & Liquidity

In terms of trading volume and liquidity, Kraken is a popular exchange to buy crypto with several supported fiat currencies, processing over $1 billion in spot trading daily. While Bybit is not as popular of exchange for spot trading, it is one of the larger derivative trading platforms, processing over $15 billion in daily trading volume.

At the time of writing, Kraken offers deep liquidity, with an average liquidity score of 748 (out of 1,000, making it nearly equal to FTX and Coinbase. Bybit offers decent liquidity with a score of 593, but it is much lower than Kraken. Liquidity ratings help determine whether users can place large orders and avoid excess slippage. Kraken is by far the more liquid spot trading market, making it an ideal day trading platform for active traders and those placing much larger orders.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Features, Products & Services

Bybit and Kraken offer advanced trading platforms with a good selection of cryptocurrencies available, and both support trading with leverage. Here is a comparison and overview of some of the common and unique features of both Bybit and Kraken.

Supported Currencies

Kraken supports over 190 crypto assets listed across over 500 trading pairs, which is a great selection. Kraken is constantly adding support for more and more cryptocurrencies and offers deep liquidity on some of the most popular coins. Conversely, Bybit offers a smaller selection of coins with just over 100 cryptocurrencies for purchase and over 200 trading pairs available.

Kraken supports 7 fiat currencies, while Bybit only supports 2 fiat currencies that can only be exchanged with USDC or USDT. Both Bybit and Kraken support bank transfers and credit/debit card purchases but charge high fees to use these services. For the derivatives markets, Bybit Exchange offers over 100 trading pairs between the perpetual and futures trading features, while Kraken supports over 50 markets between perpetual and futures contracts. Also, Bybit offers a crypto P2P exchange to trade crypto directly between users without a middle-man using a variety of payment options.

Margin Trading (with Leverage)

Bybit is one of the best crypto margin trading platforms, offering a range of markets including spot trading with margin, leveraged tokens, and futures contracts. Over 150 derivatives markets are supported. The available markets are:

• Spot: Optional leverage of up to 3x can be applied to over 200 trading pairs.
• Perpetual contracts: Perpetual contracts are available in both USDT and USDC pairings. Up to 100x leverage is available.
• Inverse contracts: Perpetual and futures contracts use the coin itself as collateral. Only a handful of available coins are supported, including BTC and ETH. Futures contracts are settled on a quarterly basis.
• Options contracts: USDC-settled options contracts are available on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.
• Leveraged tokens: A small selection of tokens that offer both LONG and SHORT positions with 2x or 3x leverage.

Kraken also offers spot margin trading as well as futures trading, with up to 5x leverage available on spot purchases, and up to 50x leverage available on futures contracts. The futures contracts are available on a perpetual basis or on a quarterly basis. The spot margin platform is available for U.S. customers but is currently restricted to professional traders only. Its Futures trading platform with up to 50x leverage available is not accessible to U.S. users.

Earning Interest on Crypto

Bybit and Kraken both offer interest-earning crypto products on their platforms, allowing users to earn a passive yield on their crypto. Bybit offers multiple interest-bearing products, including:

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi) mining. Users can use Bybit to join Curve mining pools to earn yield.
• Liquidity mining. Join liquidity pools to earn yield by collecting transaction fees from DeFi exchanges.
• Crypto savings accounts. Deposit crypto for a fixed – or flexible – length of time and earn interest.
• Dual asset investing strategy. Deposit USDT and another crypto asset, predict the price action, and each yield.
• Launchpool. A way to stake crypto and earn new tokens for free.

Kraken on the other hand does not offer any interest products for its users to earn passive income. The only mechanism available is staking proof-of-stake coins.

Crypto Staking

Both Kraken and Bybit offer crypto staking, though each of them approaches it differently. On the Kraken platform, users can stake tokens and earn up to 20% APY on over a dozen crypto assets. Both on-chain and off-chain staking are available, the minimums are very low, and there are no time restrictions, meaning users can un-stake at any time. This is why Kraken is one of the best staking exchanges in the industry. However, participants should be mindful of the 15% commission charged on staking profits.

Similarly, Bybit Exchange offers the ability to stake coins through its Crypto Savings account, which is not a traditional “Proof-of-Stake” platform. Instead, users can deposit their choice of 25 supported tokens at varying lockup time periods to earn rewards. There are flexible staking terms, 14-day lockups, 30-day lockups, and 60-day lockups, with the longer time periods paying a higher interest rate. Some smaller cap coins pay over 100% APY, but most popular coins pay between 2% and 5% APY.

Buying & Selling NFTs

Bybit offers an NFT marketplace that allows users to buy and sell NFTs. Bybit offers a small selection of NFTs for sale across multiple blockchains. Bybit offers fee-free purchases of NFT’s, but does charge a 1% seller’s fee in addition to royalty fees paid by sellers. On the other hand, Kraken has yet to launch its NFT marketplace, though it does have a waitlist, indicating it will be coming soon.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Ease of Use

Bybit and Kraken both offer intuitive mobile apps and comprehensive trading platforms, but they operate very differently. Kraken offers a simplified trading platform for beginners, as well as an advanced platform for professional traders, while Bybit provides a full-featured advanced trading platform for intermediate and advanced users with Tradingview charts.

The Kraken trading experience for beginners is more of an order form, allowing users to buy, sell, or swap crypto. Kraken also offers an advanced trading platform with more detailed charting, though the user interface is a bit dated. Kraken is in beta with its new Kraken Pro trading platform, which does offer some enhancements and a more modern design.

Bybit offers a more complex trading experience designed for advanced traders that have a deep level of crypto trading knowledge. With built-in advanced charting, quick access to margin and derivatives trading, and even programmable crypto trading bots, beginners may feel quickly overwhelmed. The mobile app offers similar advanced trading features as the website platform, but it is well designed and laid out for experienced traders.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Trading Experience

Kraken offers a dedicated trading platform, Kraken Pro, designed for more experienced traders. While the trading platform is a bit dated, the new Beta platform is well-designed. Users can access a variety of order types, live order books, advanced charting with TradingView chart integration, and the ability to create custom watch lists. The new Kraken Pro trading experience is much better than the old view, with a more intuitive layout, and users can drag and drop windows to customize their layout.

Alternatively, Bybit has an advanced trading platform that is also powered by TradingView charts. This gives users full control over their charting strategy, with hundreds of built-in indicators and drawing tools. Bybit also offers live order books, a depth chart, an intuitive order form (with access to market, limit, stop-loss, and conditional orders), and a quick jump menu to filter for your favorite cryptocurrencies to trade.

Users can quickly access spot (and optional margin), leveraged tokens, and even program a crypto trading bot for more automated trading strategies. The derivatives platform offers even more choices, including access to dozens of perpetual futures contracts, and even crypto call options trading. Overall, Bybit offers everything an advanced trader could want in a trading platform.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Mobile App

Kraken offers two mobile apps, one for beginners, and a Kraken Pro app for advanced traders. The standard Kraken mobile app offers streamlined functionality for beginner crypto investors to buy and sell crypto with ease. Based on 18,000 customer reviews at the time of writing, the Kraken Android app has a very good rating of 4.2/5.0, while the Kraken Pro Android app has a score of 4.0/5 based on 26,000 customer reviews. We found the standard Kraken app to be simple and responsive for beginners, while the Kraken Pro app was well-designed for active traders, offering access to advanced trading tools and charting.

The Bybit app is also available on Android and iOS mobile devices and offers a comprehensive trading experience, with most of the same trading tools as the web app. The Android app has been downloaded by millions of users and boasts a 4.1/5.0 based on over 68,000 reviews. Based on our reviews, the Bybit app offers quite a few features and an intuitive design and is responsive and easy to use.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Trading Fees

Bybit offers competitive fees for traders, starting at 0.1% per trade. There is also fee discounts for high-volume traders. Bybit utilizes a maker-taker fee schedule, and the highest-level traders ($10 million or more in monthly trading volume) don’t have to pay any fees on market maker orders.

Kraken has multiple trading fee structures, with its standard platform charging very high fees (up to 3% or more), while the maker fees and taker fees on Kraken Advanced Trade start at 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively. Similar to Bybit, discounts on trading fees can be obtained for high-volume traders that also use a maker-and-taker fee structure.

Crypto Market	Bybit Trading Fees	Kraken Trading Fees
Spot (fiat-to-crypto)	0.1% (maker) / 0.1% (taker)	Instant Buy: 0.9% – 5.25%, Trading: from 0.16% (maker) / 0.26% (taker)
Derivatives trading	0.01% (maker) / 0.06% (taker)	0.02% (maker) / 0.05% (taker)

For derivatives trading, Bybit and Kraken have nearly identical fees. Bybit maker fees are lower on derivatives, while Kraken taker fees are overall lower. Neither platform offers trading rebates.

Bybit vs. Kraken: Security

Both Bybit and Kraken are world-class exchanges with an emphasis on account security and fund safety. Both enforce modern data encryption and cold wallet storage processes, and both have never been hacked.

Bybit and a Kraken account both offer Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for accounts, KYC identity verification, and the ability to whitelist withdrawal addresses and both keep a majority of crypto in offline cold storage. Both platforms also offer world-class data protection, as well as multi-signature wallets and state-of-the-art crypto vaults to protect user funds.

Related: How long to verify a Kraken account?

Bybit states that it keeps 100% of user-deposited crypto in cold storage, and only allows withdrawals 3 times per day to prevent loss. Kraken requires 2FA on all withdrawals, and users can lock their accounts from anywhere if they suspect unusual activity. Kraken also offers 24/7 surveillance with armed guards patrolling the platform's data centres with multiple levels of control within the company to prevent internal theft.

Bybit vs Kraken: Comparison Scores

To conclude this comparison of which exchange is better between Bybit and Kraken, each crypto exchange has been scored using simple evaluation criteria as shown below.

Comparison Criteria	Winner
Supported Countries	Kraken
Trading Volume	Bybit
Supported Coins	Kraken
Leverage Trading	Bybit
Earning Interest on Crypto	Bybit
Staking crypto	Kraken
Ease of Use	Draw
Trading Experience	Bybit
Mobile App	Kraken
NFTs	Bybit
Trading Fees	Bybit
Security	Kraken